Chapter 9 - The Burning Threshold
"Clara!" I screamed through the choking smoke, coughing violently as the toxic fumes burned my lungs.
"Daniel! Here!" Her voice was faint, coming from near the base of the coal chute. She had shoved Lily up the metal slide, but her own strength had completely failed her. She lay collapsed on the soot-covered floor, the roaring flames reflecting in her wide, tear-filled eyes.
Behind me, Marcus was screaming as his suit caught fire from the spraying embers. He scrambled blindly up the stone stairs toward the ballroom, desperate to escape the inferno, clawing at the walls like a blind rat. Vanessa was right behind him, her designer dress singed and smoking, her hysterical shrieks echoing above the roar of the fire.
I ignored them both. Crawling on my hands and knees under the billowing curtain of black smoke, I reached Clara.
"I can't climb it, Daniel," she wept, her voice barely a rattle in her chest. "My legs... they gave me injections every day... I can't feel my feet..."
"I'm not leaving you again," I choked out, hauling her onto my back.
The heat was blistering. The ceiling was beginning to buckle; chunks of burning plaster and heavy floorboards from the ballroom above were collapsing into the cellar, raining fire all around us. The exit stairs were a raging chimney of flame—the coal chute was our only chance.
I reached up into the dark metal shaft. "Lily! Are you out?!"
"Daddy! I'm outside! The grass is wet!" her voice echoed down the metal tube, small and terrified. "Help Mommy!"
The shaft was narrow—built for coal, not grown adults. Clara could fit, but with her dead weight, pushing her up from below was nearly impossible while inhaling pure carbon monoxide.
My vision was swimming with black spots. My lungs felt as though they were filled with crushed glass.
Then, Clara grabbed my face with both hands. "The counterweight, Daniel! The delivery pulley behind the bricks! Cut the rope!"
I looked through the dancing flames. Set into the stone wall next to the chute was a heavy hemp rope hooked to a hundred-pound lead counterweight—used decades ago to haul heavy buckets of anthracite up to the kitchens.
I lunged for Evans's dropped pocketknife on the floor. My fingers closed around the handle just as a burning support beam crashed down inches from my head, showering my back with white-hot embers.
I dragged Clara into the metal iron bucket of the lift, wrapping the rusted chain around her waist.
"Hold on to the chains!" I yelled over the roar of the collapsing room.
I slashed the pocketknife across the ancient hemp rope.
The rope snapped with a whip-like crack. The massive lead weight plunged into the dark drainage pit below, and the counterweight system activated. The iron lift shot upward through the vertical service shaft, carrying Clara up through the floorboards toward the rain-soaked air of the courtyard above.
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She was safe. Lily was safe.
A massive groan echoed through the manor's foundation. The entire ceiling above the cellar caved in, burying the stone steps in tons of blazing masonry, sealing me in the dark with the fire.
